⚠️ If you’ve noticed a change in the way that fossil fuel companies market themselves recently, you’re not alone. We’ve felt a huge shift too, which is why today, Clean Creatives has released a new report analyzing over 1,850 pieces of campaign materials from 4 oil majors, revealing that a new age of fossil fuel advertising has begun.
This is no longer the era of greenwash - it’s the era of gaslighting. Ad campaigns are more toxic than ever, instilling fear into the general public to make us believe we’ll never be able to live without fossil fuels, despite clean energy being cheaper and more reliable.
With help from the Ad & PR industry, fossil fuel companies are now following a shared playbook. Our analysis found that:
🚩 They’re selling fossil fuels as false renewable solutions
🚩 Their marketing campaigns are delaying the energy transition
🚩 Any illusion that agencies could nudge their fossil fuel clients toward transition is gone
Toxic Accounts is a toolkit for creatives and advertising professionals who want to break up with oil and gas, forever. 💔
🚨 Read the full report at the link in our bio - including a downloadable deck and an audio visual presentation for your next team meeting.
The ad industry has a dirty little secret. Well, actually, it’s not little at all.
🌏 💰 Fossil fuels are responsible for 75% of carbon pollution, but less than 1% of global marketing spend. For most agencies, fossil fuel clients create a huge legal and reputational risk for a small paycheck, which means the planet is the one picking up the tab.
🗑️🧾 So who’s actually doing the dirty work? It took a lot of digging (and a little dumpster diving), but we have the receipts.
We ran the numbers. Here’s what we found:
✔️ 1,217 fossil fuel contracts across 709 ad & PR agencies in 74 countries
✔️ 293 contracts from holding companies
✔️ 924 contracts from independent agencies
✔️ 773 continued contracts from the 2024 F-List
✔️ Edelman ranks #1 in our Fossil Fuel Income Risk Exposure (FFIRE) index. This means their fossil fuel revenue makes up the highest percentage of their overall income of any company analyzed.
✔️ The new Omnicom-IPG merger makes it the holding company with the most contracts. They represent over 100 fossil fuel relationships, the highest number of contracts from any holding company on the F-List to date.
The receipts are unrolling, and this industry’s ties to fossil fuels are unraveling. Read the full F-List and join the movement at /f-list
#WeHaveTheReceipts #TheFListReceipts #CleanCreatives #FList2025 #Greenwashing #Advertising #Sustainability #ClimateChange #NYCClimateWeek
Over 1,400 Ad & PR agencies worldwide have joined Clean Creatives and pledged to drop fossil fuel clients. The rest? Well, we’ve got receipts for that.🧾
Fossil fuels are the world’s biggest polluters, and too many ad agencies are still helping them spin the story. Learn more about who Clean Creatives are, what we’re here to do, and then 📲 send this to someone who you know who’ll want the receipts when they drop on Tuesday, September 23rd.
#ClimateWeek2025 #ClimateWeekNYC #FossilFuels #advertising #pr #greenwashing #ClimateAction #Sustainability
🤐 Your insider knowledge is a superpower.
Last month, six employees at WPP agencies helped @desmognews and The Guardian reveal that WPP was breaching its own climate policy to help ExxonMobil spend billions on misleading advertising.
You don't need a stash of secret documents. Your own experiences could be the missing piece for a journalist working to hold this industry accountable.
❓But how do you actually do it safely? What does "off the record" even mean? We’re going to help answer those questions, and more.
We're teaming up with @climatewhistleblowers for a FREE online event:
📰 Off the Record: How to talk to journalists, lawyers, and activist organizations
🗓 Tuesday, May 19th
⏰ 5–6pm BST / 12–1pm EDT / 9–10am PDT
🔒 Hosted on a secure Zoom — your attendance is fully anonymized. No one else on the call will see the other attendees.
🔗 RSVP at the link in bio. We look forward to (not) seeing you there. 👋
🍻What a way to kick off spring! Thank you to everyone who came out to TALEA Williamsburg for our NYC Spring Happy Hour.
This is what we mean when we say ✨community.✨
Our meetups are a time to swap wins, connect with creatives who believe a fossil-free industry is possible, and engage in conversations that remind you why you got into this industry in the first place.
Interested in joining our next one?
→ Take the Pledge at cleancreatives.org
→ Follow us for the next event - we have them all over the globe!
→ Tag a creative who needs to be at the next one
This is what a fossil-free creative industry looks like.💛
👋 Hey Netflix. 👋 Hey Dentsu. Let’s talk. 👀
✔️You've just signed a $190M EMEA media partnership.
✔️Dentsu already has the best sustainability track record of the major holding companies.
✅ Netflix already has climate targets.
So what's stopping you from going all the way?
🫶 We’re here to help! We've written you the roadmap in our Offramp Guide. Now it's your turn to walk the red carpet, and lead the rest of the industry there.
🔗 cleancreatives.org/offramp
Introducing our first impact partner - Clean Creatives! Slick is a comedy web series about the PR shills who spin for big oil, and Clean Creatives is a nonprofit trying to stop that from happening in real life (which it currently does… a lot). A match made in heaven!
We’ll be working together in the coming months to connect the comedy of Slick with real world facts and actions — so stay tuned on Instagram, YouTube, and even IRL. Get ready to laugh AND maybe change the world a little bit?
🎞️ Coming soon to a Netflix account near you! 🎥
These are fictional for now. But if Netflix awards its EMEA media account to an F-List agency like Omnicom, it’ll be paying an agency that runs more fossil fuel campaigns than anyone else on the planet.
🤞The review is happening right now, and fingers crossed for a moment of clarity on their side. Stranger Things have happened at Netflix!
Sign our open letter to Netflix so these titles don’t become a reality. 🔗in bio.
Netflix EMEA media contract review is in its final stages, and three agencies in the running hold a combined 200+ active fossil fuel contracts. Who are they?
🔴 @omnicom (post- @ipgmediabrands merger): 120 fossil fuel contracts on the 2025 F-List — more than any other holding company in the world. That's 10% of the entire list.
🔴 @wpp : Received the world's first OECD complaint against an ad agency for its fossil fuel work in 2025.
🔴 @dentsu : Continues to work with @shell , petronas, @omv , and @chevron
Along with having ambitious sustainability goals, brands and industries like Netflix stand to lose 🥵 a lot 🥵 of money due to climate change. According to top film trade publication @screendaily , if just 5% of your $18B content budget faces 10 day weather delays, that's $450 million in preventable losses.
Hiring an agency on the F-List that’s working to increase fossil fuel production, puts your own bottom line at risk. 👉Going with one of these agencies is conflict of interest hiding in plain sight.👈 And if the agencies pitching for Netflix's business won't drop fossil fuels, Netflix should drop them instead.
So what can you do to help?
1️⃣ Read and sign our open letter to Netflix - 🔗 in bio, and
2️⃣ tag someone you know or follow in the entertainment industry so they can see and sign the open letter themselves.
Let’s show them why choosing a fossil-free agency isn't a compromise.
There seems to be a trend happening in fossil fuel advertising, and it has two things in common: targeting children, making coal cuddly. Yeah, we laughed too, but it’s real.
Meet the cartoon characters, Fossi and Coalie, who are being used to make fossil fuels feel family-friendly, misunderstood, and even… heroic? Swipe to see how the fossil fuel industry is taking its playbook straight to the nursery. 🧸🔥
Read @desmognews ' full coverage - 🔗 in bio.
